Hetzner vs DigitalOcean vs Vultr vs Linode: 2027 VPS Prices Compared Plan for Plan

Most "cheapest VPS" lists compare one provider's smallest plan with another provider's smallest plan, which tells you nothing, because the plans are not the same size. This post lines up the four providers Cloudhim readers ask about most at the three sizes a small PHP, Laravel, WordPress or Docker project actually runs on: 1 GB, 2 GB and 4 GB of RAM.

Every number below comes from each provider's own pricing page, checked on 30 October 2026: these are the prices you pay for a new server going into 2027. Hetzner prices are in euros, excluding VAT, and include the €0.50 primary IPv4 charge. The other three are in US dollars. Treat the tables as a snapshot and confirm the live price before you buy: prices moved twice at Hetzner alone this year.

The short answer

• Cheapest for 4 GB of RAM, if you can get one: Hetzner CX23 at €5.99. Nothing else is close. The catch is stock, covered below.
• Cheapest you can reliably order at 1–4 GB: Vultr, by a dollar or more at every size, followed by Akamai's Linode plans.
• Most traffic included: Hetzner, at 20 TB a month in its EU locations on every plan, against 1–4 TB elsewhere.
• Cheapest overage if you do go over: Akamai, at $0.005 per GB, half what DigitalOcean and Vultr charge.

1 GB of RAM: the "small site" tier

Hetzner added its 1 GB plan, CPX02, on 6 October 2026, when it added CPX02 to its Regular Performance line. Before that, its cheapest plan was CX23 with 4 GB.

Before you pick a 1 GB plan, know what you are putting on it. Canonical's release notes list Ubuntu Server 26.04 as needing "as low as 1.5 GB RAM". A 1 GB server will still run a static site, a small WordPress blog or a single lightweight container, but it needs a swap file and little else running alongside it. Our guide to setting up swap properly covers that. For a Laravel app with a queue worker, or WordPress with WooCommerce, start at 2 GB.

DigitalOcean and Vultr both also sell 512 MB plans ($4 and from $2.50). They are fine for a tiny static site, a reverse proxy or a test box, and too small for anything that runs PHP and MySQL.

2 GB of RAM: where most real projects start

At 2 GB the four are within about $2 of each other, so the decision is really about everything other than price: where the data centre is, what the control panel and API are like, and how much traffic you serve. If you serve large downloads or video, Hetzner's 20 TB matters. If your visitors are in the US or Asia, Hetzner's EU allowance does not apply: its Singapore plans include 0.5–5 TB and its US plans 1–5 TB, at higher prices.

4 GB of RAM: comfortable for a Laravel or WordPress stack

This is where Hetzner's Cost-Optimized line is in a different league: CX23 costs roughly a quarter of what the others charge for the same RAM. It runs on older hardware that Hetzner keeps in service to hold the price down, and its vCPUs are shared, so CPU-heavy work runs slower than on CPX. For a typical PHP site that spends most of its time waiting on the database, that rarely shows. Our CX23 pricing guide has the full Cost-Optimized and Arm tables.

The Arm plan (CAX11) is even more interesting on paper, but check that every image and binary you need has an arm64 build first. Most official Docker images do; some older PHP extensions and closed-source agents do not.

The part the price tables leave out: can you actually order it?

Hetzner has been short of cloud capacity since June. Its status page has said since 26 June 2026 that cloud servers can only be provisioned "to a limited extent". When I checked on 30 October:

• Hetzner's own Cost-Optimized and Regular Performance pages showed every plan as unavailable.
• An independent tracker that polls Hetzner's API (hetzner.thegoated.dev) showed CPX02, CPX12 and CPX22 orderable in Nuremberg, Falkenstein, Helsinki and Singapore, CX23 "limited" in Nuremberg and Falkenstein, and CAX11 sold out everywhere.

So it can be worth trying the console even when the pricing page says no. In practice: if a project needs a server today, plan for the possibility that you can't get the cheapest Hetzner plan in the location you want, and have a second choice ready. Servers you already run are not affected.

DigitalOcean, Vultr and Akamai have had no comparable shortage on their small shared plans this year.

Add-ons that change the real monthly cost

Provider backups are a convenient first layer, but they live with the same company as the server. If the account is suspended or the provider has a bad day, both go together. A copy somewhere else is what actually protects you; our five-layer backup strategy shows how to set that up for a few cents a month.

Not sure whether you are anywhere near your traffic allowance? Our free Bandwidth Calculator converts a monthly allowance like 2 TB into the average speed it allows, and the reverse.

Which one I would pick

• EU visitors, tight budget, can wait for stock: Hetzner CX23. Nothing else gives you 4 GB for under €6.
• Need it today, any region: Vultr at 2 GB ($10) or 4 GB ($20). It is the cheapest of the three providers that have not had Hetzner's stock problems this year.
• Already using Akamai's CDN or want cheaper overage: Linode. Same price as DigitalOcean at 2 and 4 GB, half the overage rate.
• Want the gentlest learning curve: DigitalOcean. Not the cheapest at any size here, but its documentation and managed add-ons (databases, App Platform) are the most beginner-friendly.

Whichever you choose, the first hour on a new server matters more than the provider. Work through our Start Here guides before you put anything live.

FAQ

Why not include AWS Lightsail or OVHcloud?
They are good options, but Cloudhim readers mostly compare these four. We may add them in a later update.

Are the vCPUs comparable between providers?
Not exactly. All plans in these tables use shared vCPUs, which means you share physical cores with other customers and performance can vary. Hetzner's CPX runs on AMD EPYC; CX runs on older Intel and AMD generations. For steady CPU-heavy work, every provider also sells dedicated-vCPU plans at a higher price (Hetzner's start at €43.49).

Do Hetzner's US locations get 20 TB too?
No. 20 TB applies to the EU locations. US plans include 1–5 TB and Singapore plans 0.5–5 TB, depending on size.

Will these prices hold through 2027?
Don't assume so. Memory and storage costs have pushed several providers' prices up this year. Re-check each provider's live page before you budget for next year.

I checked every price and plan on each provider's own pricing page (Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Vultr and Akamai) and on Hetzner's billing documentation on 30 October 2026. Stock status for Hetzner comes from its product pages and the independent tracker linked above, on the same day.

Related guides

• Vultr Pricing (2026): Every Cloud Compute Plan, Backups, Bandwidth and VX1
• How Much Does It Cost to Run a Small Website or SaaS in the Cloud? (2026 Breakdown)
• Backing Up a Solo-Dev VPS to Cloudflare R2 with Restic (Without a Surprise Bill)
• Hetzner Price Increases: What Changed in 2026 and What to Expect in 2027
• Laravel Cloud vs a VPS: When Managed Laravel Hosting Is Actually Worth It
• DigitalOcean Droplet Pricing 2027: Full Tables, v5 Droplets and the Billing Change Nobody Got Right
• KVM VPS, Shared vCPU or Dedicated vCPU? What the Plan Names Actually Mean